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Kansas City Mo

On June 4, 2015 Mayor Sly James and the Kansas City City Council adopted the Energy Empowerment Ordinance (No. 150299), requiring owners of large buildings to measure and report the energy and water use of their properties. The ordinance covers 3% of the city’s non-single family buildings, accounting for 47% of the energy used by buildings in Kansas City.

The ordinance addresses energy use in existing municipal, commercial, and residential buildings larger than 50,000 square feet. Under the ordinance, these building owners will be required to track whole-building energy and water use and report it to the city annually.

Participating buildings will be phased in, starting with municipal buildings over 10,000 square feet in 2016, and expanding to include private commercial and multifamily residential buildings over 100,000 square feet in 2017. All private commercial and multifamily buildings over 50,000 square feet will be included in 2018.

Under the legislation, owners of the designated buildings will be required to annually benchmark and report to the city their properties’ energy use via the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool. That reported benchmarking data will be made available to the public on a phased schedule starting in 2016.